After Midnight Dies
by Subia Jasmine
Summary: In the midst of such a beautiful nightmare they find her that night. Snatches of conversation growing louder, faces blurring together, the clock on the wall ticking towards midnight like a time bomb... The Wild Party, centered on Jackie and Queenie.
1. Down Goes the Wall

"_Down goes the wall  
__Down goes the card  
__After midnight dies  
__Is it so hard  
__To see the truth?  
__No need for lies  
__What we are is all we are_

_After midnight dies!"_

_- The Wild Party_

* * *

Part of him is hoping he'll be able to slip in unnoticed. That he'll find Queenie asleep on the couch and be able to find space next to her to lay himself down. It's a heavy, sticky Manhattan night outside, the air tastes and warns of rain. As he trips through Queenie's front door he is greeted by moans coming from her bedroom far in the back. One set between gasps and growls and other irregularly, the kind a woman makes with her eyes screwed up tight. The door is slightly open, the hinges have never worked well, and through it he catches glimpses of Queenie locked in a kind of vertical wrestling match with her boyfriend Burrs. The walls shake periodically as one or the other tries to kick the door shut at every pause for breath.

Queenie, for her part, sounds almost bored by the proceedings, but Burrs is too deeply entrenched in the glory that is she to notice much of anything. He can see Queenie concentrating very hard on the ceiling, trying to take herself out of the moment when Burrs jams her hip into the ajar door, hard enough to bruise, and it gives, sending them both flying, half-clothed, across the studio. Queenie lands in a heap on the floor and shoves Burrs impatiently off her chest. She sees her friend by the door, his hand on the doorknob, and her smudged red lipstick spreads into a brilliant smile.

"Jackie!" she trills. Her laugh sounds like a wind chime. She registers none of the embarrassment most women would have expressed at having her best friend walk in on her having sex in the middle of her studio floor.

Jackie watches as Burrs, undeterred, grabs Queenie by the leg, trying to pull her back to him. Queenie, with an angry scoffing sound, kicks out and sends him reeling backwards, holding his face and swearing in Yiddish. Jackie blinks.

"I'll… wait outside," Jackie suggests, as Queenie stretches languidly. Burrs gives a kind of affirmative growl, but Queenie's smile grows ever more vindictive and she reaches up for him.

"Oh no, honey, that's okay. We're done."

Jackie takes her offered hand and kisses it, even as Burrs struggles to get back between her legs with one hand clutching his bleeding face.

"No- we're -_not_!" he hisses, still half on top of her. _"Queenie!"_ he moans.

She spares him one look of utter disgust before letting Jackie pull her to her feet.

"Where the fuck is my bra?" she mutters, stepping over her seething boyfriend on the floor and turning on one heel. Her vivid bathrobe hangs limp on her powdered-white shoulders as she reaches for the lacy black chemise hanging on her doorknob, then turns back and begins a fierce hunt for the trail of her clothing across the apartment.

Jackie takes his leave before Burrs can come to completely, and sits on the steps to the apartment until Queenie emerges a minute later, rumpled but at least clothed. She smiles as she sinks down on her knees to kiss him.

"Hey, lover." Her chemise is sheer.

"Fortissima." He runs his hand through her hair. "Honey, where are your panties?"

Queenie catches the fabric of the chemise and pulls it down over her thighs.

"Don't know," she says breezily. "I'll get 'em later."

She perches on the concrete of the step, then swings her legs across his lap. With most women Jackie would have accepted the obvious invitation without a second thought. But Queenie is not most women. She flops backward on the paved step and closes her legendary, lavender-framed silver eyes. Jackie leans back too, against the door with the broken hinges, his body at a right angle to Queenie's.

It is an odd moment for each of them to seek peace. But their relationship is a series of odd moments like this, made significant by silence and closeness. Their shared smile hangs, suspended in the damp air, and then they feels the door rattle hard behind as Burrs kicks it, rhythmically, until Queenie pushes herself up onto her elbows.

"_What?"_ she hisses, her claws out and her eyes flashing. Burrs just glares at her through the glass. The heat between them is palpable.

"Fuck off, Burrs. Go finish yourself, I think my underwear is still in there somewhere. I'm not sure where you threw it."

Jackie giggles as his mutinous face disappears, but his presence has roused Queenie to business.

"Wassamatter, lover?"

Jackie shrugs, leans forward over her leg and rubs it. Her slender arms come around his neck.

"Tell Queenie what's wrong," she croons. He just shrugs again.

"Nothing's wrong."

At which Queenie scoffs again, but gently. He feels her breath against his hair.

"I knew you'd still be up. As it was I might as well save you from a fate worse than death itself."

He jerks his head toward the door. Queenie's laugh is high-pitched and sharp. She nearly always laughs with her eyes closed.

"Then stay up with me. We'll go do something," Queenie tells him. "Lemme up a minute, so I can pry my underwear from his clutching fingers… I think there's a midnight show at the Virginia tonight…"

"It's already 2:30, Fortissima."

"Is it really?" Undeterred, Queenie swings the door open. "Hmmm. We'll have to make do with what we've got. And what we've got is money and booze and a great expanse of suitable alleyways. Cheap love beckons us forward into the night!"

She marches inside with a determination only Burrs would challenge. Then she twists halfway around.

"Jackie, honey, toss me those, would you?" Jackie picks up a pair of black stockings and underwear and throws them to Queenie, who catches them deftly and struggles to pull them up over her hips. Her red blouse is wedged halfway underneath the door to her bedroom. If she's going to be taking it on and off all night it doesn't matter, really, that she's worn it for her act for the last three days.

Burrs stands in the doorway, Queenie has to shove past him to get her money. Even leaning, as he is, against the doorframe, his shadow casts a threatening claustrophobia through the studio.

"Where you bringing her?" he demands.

The underscored threat in Burrs' casual tone, further stressed by the tense, unnatural stillness of his body, misses Jackie's ear as it flies over his head. Jackie goes to the table by the door, playing distractedly with the flame flickering above the melting orange candlestick. Burrs takes a few steps towards him.

"When are you bringing her back?"

"I'll have her home by dawn, father." He rolls his eyes, but still doesn't raise them entirely to Burrs'. The last word would have slipped by unnoticed and without question were he talking to anyone else. The smile hovering on Burrs' mouth is truly sickening. His hand is raised and the space between them seems to close, before:

"Jackie, you ready to go?"

Queenie is reapplying her lip liner, and Jackie takes it from her to keep his hands moving, though they shake a little as he helps her. Burrs unexcused hand hovers in the air for a few seconds, before he waves the two of them out the door with an ironic bow. He takes Queenie by the hand and kisses her hard, squeezing until her eyes close with the pain. She doesn't wince away, but it's close, like a battle of will. Burrs breaks away suddenly, slaps Jackie hard on the back. His smile understands without empathy. Jackie ushers his friend out the door.

The night beckons the two of them forward, into stranger's arms and gin-soaked oblivion. Ahead of them, a bleach-blonde shares a flask and a kiss and a laugh with a lover whose face is lost to the shadow. Queenie shines against the filth of the tenements and the sex. It's so easy to believe that she is happy. The sun will soon break the sinister, glimmering spell, and when she's back in Burrs' arms, maybe then it will hit her. But these arms and lips and this heat do not belong to Burrs, and do not possess her for more than an instant.

She and Jackie meet up periodically, and at half past six, he brings her to her street, her red blouse torn at the neck as she folds herself into his arms. She does not want to face what is inside. Not yet.

Jackie waits with her for a few minutes. He kisses her, just as the apartment door opens and a chilly voice issues one command.

"Get inside, Queenie."

Jackie doesn't immediately let go of her as she winces. The instinct is embedded in us to protect us from pain. Burrs' hand shoots out and clasps Queenie's neck. Her eyes are shadows of pain and slowly she forces her body to loosen and stands before him with hatred in those eyes. His hands moves to the neckline of her ripped blouse, he takes the fabric almost gently and examines, and in one motion twists it in his hand and bears his wife up the stairs to the apartment. Her clenched hand brushes her friend's as Burrs compels her through the door and hisses, "Wait in there."

He turns slowly on the spot; while his knuckles turn white on the doorknob he locks eyes with Jackie. That smile returns to his face as he hears Queenie's shaking breath behind the door, as he sees Jackie flinch at the sudden, scalding eye contact. Just as slowly, he descends the steps, again his barely controlled voice holds the threat of insane jealousy.

"What's the story with you and my Queenie?"

"There is no story." Jackie should know better than to turn his back. Slowly, Burrs pulls him back.

"Now, don't give me that, Jackie." His voice feigns teasing, as he does so, as he speaks to his wife's best friend the way he speaks to women.

"She's a beauty, isn't she? You know she is. You want her, Jackie? You fucking her? Don't tell me that, Jackie," he adds when he shows signs of turning to go. He doesn't look defiant or guilty. Burrs is satisfied for now, but as his hand leaves Jackie's arm the blow falls.

"She the only one in the city you can't get?"

Jackie finds himself blocking out Queenie's tears, and with them any reason to stay, with the numbing sounds of the roaring traffic.

* * *

Queenie's voice sings from his open doorway, holding back a scream. Jackie catches her as she falls onto his shoulder. She breathes him in before her eyes flutter open and her eyes register a timid smile.

"Lover, can you spare a hit?"

He's almost out of this shared poison, but as Queenie coils herself miserably around his waist he knows a moment of selflessness. He gathers her hair off her face as Queenie takes her fill, and she feels the tears recede as numbness sets in and she lays her head in his lap. Her hair is uncurled, hanging around her face. Her whole presence suggests incompleteness; there is something a little dirty or a little broken about every part of her. He sees the bruise on her neck.

Queenie's eyes are desperate. If they don't talk about it, in time the bruises will fade. He lets his hand drop. Soon they will be laughing. Queenie's arms slink up around his neck under his black coat.

"You're gonna take care of me, Jackie."

She says it like it is the only thing she can be certain of. His arms settle around her hips as Queenie eases him out of his coat and it rests on his elbows. He kisses her decisively.

"I'm gonna take care of you, Queenie."

It's what she needs to hear, though whatever else she needs from him, he can't give it to her. It's Queenie who is mother here, but it's Jackie who feels he's seen the world. He settles into his place against the uneasy pulse in her white, white, opposite the livid bruise she tried to cover with her hair, and he waits with her for darkness to fall across their world. Queenie maneuvers herself into her friend's lap. Her smile will shatter soon. This is the first time it hasn't worked for her. Queenie threads her fingers into his and lays her face in his hands. Somewhere nearby, the clock chimes six.

"Got any more?"

Jackie shakes his head against her lank hair, silent. It scares him to see her like this. He hears her laugh, then swear, then start to cry.

"Oh _shit!_" she moans. Jackie's arms tighten convulsively around Queenie's waist. If this has happened between them before, it's been Queenie who's held and kissed and known where to lead him so he will sleep.

"Queenie…" he says in a strangled and panicked moan.

Queenie leans back completely. They are fused as one body. She takes a deep breath and holds it until she can speak.

"Sorry you had to see that."

She's still crying, but the tears come silently now. She swipes at her face impatiently.

"Don't scare me like that." He breathes shaking breaths, closing his eyes against her neck.

"Tell me what you need…" and he trails off, having nothing to give her that would help now.

"I need…" Queenie dries her bitter tears with the sleeve of her dress. "I need to leave him, Jackie. That's all I need. Kate's been telling me for years. But I can't do that."

She laces her rehearsed, pitched laugh with something bitter. The two of them are bent almost double on the fraying carpet on a Saturday night. Jackie stirs a little.

"Burrs gonna come looking for you?"

Queenie gives a derisive snort.

"He passed out an hour ago. Even if he wakes up before noon tomorrow, he's got his vodka and his right hand. He won't miss me. And he won't come looking for me either."

Jackie nods when he sees there's nothing left to say. Queenie lays her face in his hands and lets out a dry, angry sob as if to say, _'This cannot be my life.'_ She reaches back into her friend's coat pocket, hoping against hope. Jackie takes her hand to stop her and brings her wrist up to his face. Slowly he lifts Queenie off the floor.

"Come with me."

The one time he will lead, and she will follow.

"Where we going?" she murmurs. He forces a laugh.

"Does it matter?" he brushes her hand against his lips. "Anywhere but here."

He hears her repeat _'Anywhere'_ behind him in a dreamy murmur.

"I'd like that." She whispers.

* * *

The woman who comes to his door the next day arrives with her hair freshly curled and her tinted mask of snow securely in place. Her eyes glitter with a set determination, and as she passes Jackie in the doorway she slips something into his pocket, letting her arm linger against him for a minute before she charges inside. He raises an eyebrow, then shrugs and shuts the door. Queenie turns sharply on her heel and claps her hands.

"Come to our place tonight, lover." She curves one hand at the back of his neck theatrically. "I've got a plan to tighten the bit on Burrs."

"Is that so?" He kisses her on the lips, humoring her, but handling her more gently than he might have, as though her abrupt return to par has made her fragile. Queenie pats his cheek and her face curves into a poisonous smile.

"It's been awhile since we've thrown a real party, hasn't it, Jackie? The last time must have been _months_ ago… for the opening of that new Vaudeville house uptown?"

Jackie catches on with a little laugh of delight. "You, darling fortissima, are brilliant."

"Oh, and it only gets better from here. I wish I could take all the credit. It was Burrs' idea to begin with."

Jackie lets out an impressed whistle.

"He wouldn't hand over the keys to his liquor cabinet for just anything… what did you do to him?"

"Pulled a knife and threatened to rip his balls off. I feel quite liberated. God, now I'm shaking, feel my pulse, will you?" she offers her wrist to him, which he draws up against his face for a brief moment before he laughs again, in preparation for the night ahead.

"Just wait for Dolores to get there. She's always invited. Even when she's _not_ invited, she's invited."

"A legend in her own mind." Queenie feigns a yawn, letting her chin drop to her chest. "But she'll do anything in her power to ruin Burrs. Though he's not far from the finish. Now all that's left to do is wait, and let the night run its course."

She wraps her arms around his neck and hooks one slender leg around his.

"So? Are you coming?"

"I suppose we'll have to wait and see, hmm?" He pats her cheek and turns her toward the door by her waist. "Go and make ready, and rest assured that your Jackie will not disappoint."

Queenie blows a kiss from her fingertips.

"We'll all be waiting for the life of the party."

"Stop flattering me, my darling. We all know there's no party without you. Now get out, and don't you dare tell Burrs I'm coming. I like to make an entrance."

"Oh, don't I know it." Queenie rolls her eyes dramatically at him from the street as he flutters a wave and the door swings shut behind her with a snap.

Queenie has brought money to hail a cab. She wants, just once, to have the power of that New York woman she's almost dreamed and strived to be. But when she tells the driver to take her to 4th and Broadway, the way the words taste in her mouth let her know she's not fooling anyone. There is a mug of acrid, lukewarm coffee on her night-table when she gets back.

This is a party that will have no real beginning and no real ending. Almost no one is really invited, but word travels fast underground. A series of exits and entrances. Queenie waits at her vanity with the cracked light bulbs for the clock to chime six. Burrs is tearing up a pile of newspapers in the studio with a pair of dull sewing scissors, looking for a headline with his name. Queenie watches herself in the dusty mirror, her face framed with the tarnished brass, for a long time before she starts to smooth out her hair and choose a pair of earrings. She starts to sing to a melody from her old act as she makes ready. Burrs comes in briefly, takes a rhinestone necklace from the dully glimmering tangle of jewelry and fastens it around her neck, and Queenie turns her eyes from the mirror. Her voice sounds brassy as she croons:

"_You wake from the dream…"  
_Swinging one leg over the makeup table and closing her eyes…  
"_And begin the nightmare!"_


	2. What we are is all we are

"_Sing- sing- Singapore Sally, she was waiting for her long lost love!"_

_- The Wild Party_

* * *

In the midst of such a beautiful nightmare they find her that night. Snatches of conversation growing louder and louder, faces blurring and then blurring together, the clock on the wall ticking towards midnight like a time bomb. Queenie sits on the banister, legs crossed so her rhinestone skirt is drawn up around her thighs and everyone who looks at her sighs with envy, bracing her arm against Eddie's shoulder, her outstretched hand clutching a cigarette. Eddie, for his part, is leaning against the railing with his arms folded, talking across the room to Phil at the piano, barely noticing Queenie's slight weight. His wife's sister, for all tense and purposes, his sister, is wedged between them with her arms around Eddie's waist. She is not speaking to anyone, only staring around at each face with huge eyes, afraid that she'll miss something if she even blinks. She steals periodic glances up at their hostess, perches precariously on the banister, at ease, engrossed. She has surpassed jealousy completely; she is filled with nothing but awe. Queenie balances on the banister with a look of haughty indifference on her face, as though she is a beautiful statue. Above the little girl the faces swim and the gowns twirl and the candles glare.

The door swings open and shut, and suddenly Queenie stirs, her rouged lips stretching into a smile of delight. Jackie sashays through the doorway, twirling a top hat between his fingers. He tosses it onto Queenie head and offers her his hand to descend the banister. She flicks her cigarette to the side as he swings her down off the railing. She laughs raucously as he dips her almost to the floor. Her arm shoots up to grasp his shoulder, for one moment, nothing exists for them but the bond of two arms holding them together.

Then the moment passes as Jackie pulls Queenie up, takes her by the hand and pulls her to a mismatched table to sit down. Queenie drapes herself across his lap and whispers his name through a new flutter of laughter. "Jackie, honey, you're here!"

"Never miss a party. You know me… born to champagne but doomed to wallow in bathtub gin." He kisses her, playfully, matter-of-factly. Her eyes are closed as she whispers something in his ear. He sees over her shoulder the girl who darts out from behind Eddie and races toward them through the crowds, and he takes the kiss deeper momentarily. He traces a hand up her back and nods over her shoulder, "Fortissima, tell me, what do we have here?"

Queenie gives a little scoff in his ear and she studies her nails as she drawls, "Jackie, meet Miss Nadine. She wants to be a blonde."

He matches her as he swings her off his lap. "Such is the modern age, my darling. Everyone either wants to be a blonde, or do one."

"Which are you?" Queenie reaches an arm around his neck to offer him a cigarette.

"I think you'll find that I want for nothing in either category." He flashes her an obnoxious smile as he takes a cigarette, and Nadine speaks up.

"Are you a movie star?" she asks him, her eyes huge and expectant. Queenie's laugh is exasperated, Jackie's delighted. Nadine looks from one to other, confused. Jackie leaves Queenie's side and perches himself on the table by Nadine and glances at his friend, who knows what's coming before the words are even out of his mouth. "_Actually_, I am a student of light. I spent many a year studying in Paris-" Queenie leans over to him and slaps him playfully against the head.

"_Actually_, honey, don't believe a word that comes outta this boy's mouth. Last year it was Milan. He changes the city whenever he gets bored and needs a new story." But as she gets up to make her rounds, he slips his arm around her waist and pulls her back onto the table.

"Don't think you can walk away from that one." He kisses her on the neck. One hand rests casually in Queenie's hair, one finger brushing her throat. He pulls a leather case from his pocket. "Forget something earlier?"

"Your omniscience continues to astound me, Jackie." She reaches up, clawing at the air as he holds the case out of reach.

"Wait your turn." Razoring out the hits, he talks over her about Paris. When he lets Queenie up, Nadine comes around the table and watches, her head to side, her face puckered a little in confusion. She looks up at Jackie with silent wonder and says in a hushed voice. "Is your name up in lights in Paris?"

She is rewarded by a trilling laugh, and answers her own question. "I bet everyone loves you there. Are you a dancer?"

"Dancer, singer, seducer. Classic triple threat." He raises his glass to his lips and drains it. "Lovely ladies, excuse me."

He rises and moves to table of glass-filled trays, next to which Burrs is circling with a liquor bottle. He smiles his sickening smile. "Jackie." His voice just shy of a hiss.

"Burrs." He makes quite a show of tipping the bottle and filling the glass.

"Debonair as ever." He turns a little to the side so Jackie can't take his glass. "Hoping you'll give us a party to remember."

"I always do, Burrs, I always so." He reaches, but Burrs turns sharply.

"Won't let you run dry tonight, Jackie." He hands him his glass, but he doesn't turn to Mae until Jackie is out of sight. The look of lingering disgust on Jackie's face hasn't faded by the time he gets back to Queenie. He perches beside her. Nadine has just kept going and going and going. Queenie is nodding and nodding without looking at her, her cigarette dangling from two fingers. Glad of a distraction, she sits up.

"Jackie, what is it?"

"Your boyfriend. Does he think I _want_ to talk to him? If no one else here wanted to talk to me, I would sit and talk to your wall before I went to talk to him. So, what's going on here?"

Queenie jerks her head irritably at the girl, who crawls onto the table to sit by Jackie. He turns a little to her. Nadine tilts her head at him and says, "Queenie told me you're a dancer."

Jackie flips her hair off her neck. "Queenie knows what they say about dancers, don't you Queenie?"

Queenie turns her most innocent face to her friend, "Hmmm? Oh _that_, well honey, in that case, seek a second opinion, or third, or fourth, the list goes on and on…"

"Well, it must be true then. You're gonna have to move to Jersey, Jackie, there's no one left in New York City for you." Madeleine True towers over all tonight, resplendent in her green and gold suit jacket, her lips and nails painted the blood red of her hair. With her crimson talons she grasps Nadine's shoulder like some divine protector. Jackie lowers his gaze and lights his cigarette as he responds.

"I've been thinking of continuing the conquest out to Long Island. Start in West Egg and work out to the peak."

"Where's that, near Hempstead?" Madeleine asks in all seriousness. Jackie stares at her in disbelief.

"Alright, am I the _only_ follower of F. Scott Fitzgerald in this room? Yes? Oh this, Queenie, is truly sad. This hurts my feelings, and cannot be allowed to continue."

"You know the Fitzgeralds?" Madeleine raises one skeptically arched, sculpted eyebrow. Jackie waves aside her words as he leans his head against Queenie's shoulder. "I had to cancel on them to come here."

Madeleine shakes her magnificent head and her hand drops from Nadine's shoulder. The girl hovers on the edge of the table for a minute, looking between Jackie and Queenie and the retreating back of Madeleine True. Then she slides off the table and pelts after her into the fray. From that fray a woman in a violently pink dance costume trips against the table, spilling half her drink down her dress and swearing loudly.

"Sorry 'bout that, fellas, I-" the bleach blonde stops dead and promptly spills the rest of her drink on the floor. "Jackie! Angel face, what're you doing here, Whaldorf closed?"

Jackie laughs and leans forward toward the woman to purr, "Mae, better for night than for day…"

She slaps him playfully with her jet-black shawl as he kisses her cheek and then reaches down for her hand, where a sparkle of flecked gold has caught his eye, "What's _this_ I see?" he teases.

Mae yanks her hand away, "Yeah, that's right kid, so you better cut that in front of my Eddie 'cause he can throw you from here to Boston to Detroit to, what's that last city we went to Eddie? The one with all the riots?"

"Buffalo, fair queen." Her husband reaches around her to hand her a new glass. Mae stands on tiptoe to reach up around Eddie's neck. "Eddie, honey, tell 'em how it was when you proposed! You guys want 'im to tell it? It's a swell story…"

"Mae, hon, forget something?" Eddie cuts her off. Mae stops and then seems to remember.

"Oh yeah! Oscar and Phil are performing, we gotta let everybody know."

Queenie smirks a little. "Nice save." She says conspiratorially to Eddie.

"Don't know what you're talking about." He says breezily.

Jackie raises one arm lazily, "Children, settle down a minute! Let the boys play!"

Mae gives him what she thinks is a withering glare, "Pa-_thet_-ic." She drawls, then whispers something to Eddie, and clambers up onto his shoulders so that when he stands up straight she can see the D'Armanos warming up over everyone's heads. A few people laugh as Mae waves her arms for balance. Oscar looks up from the piano keys and waves back at her on Eddie's shoulders. When he fumbles his practice cue Phil slaps his hand away and starts to shake his arms, a nervous tic. Mae cups her hands around her mouth, pitches her voice and screams, to widespread effect, "EVERYBODY SHUT UP!"

The people nearest her jump, and gradually the apartment studio begins to reform itself around the piano. Jackie takes Queenie's hand and drags her forward, "I want good seats for this one." He shouts over their truly painful falsetto scales.

The song is set off by polite applause all around, beginning tamely enough for Oscar and Phil, until Oscar's solo is interrupted by none other than Burrs, who is shuffling around the piano in wide circles and scatting in a loud offbeat to Phil. He drums out a rhythm of his own on the side of the piano and Phil plays on, struggling to conceal his horror at this massacre of his brainchild. Oscar and Burrs end the song in a heap on top on Phil on the piano bench. The latter promptly lurches forward onto the keys with a discordant scream of frustration, burying his face in his arms. The laughter melts from his lover's face as he tries to soothe him. Phil snaps something at him and Oscar's arms drop in exasperation. "I don't know, Phil, sometimes you can just be so…"

He groans and throws up his hands instead of finishing his sentence. Phil's response is inaudible but he immediately begins to play again, moaning in frustration as his hands fumble one cue on a measure from the end. Queenie claps enthusiastically with all her guests, and then her attention is back with Jackie. "Was this the view you were expecting?"

"Mmm-hmm. Quite a performance. All class. And what an ear for music." Queenie rolls her eyes.

"Ha. Fortissima, the _only_ thing you can do properly to _their_ music is fuck. And on that note do I depart."

"Where to?"

"To 'seek a second opinion', Queenie. To put all that talk to practical use. May the same be said of your lovely self come dawn." He tosses her leather case to her and blows a kiss. Queenie weighs it in her hand experimentally as Jackie maneuvers his way toward Oscar, alone in his chair by the doorway, writing music. She climbs up onto the piano, hikes her skirt up and crosses her legs at the thighs. She flings herself backwards, cups her hands around her mouth and shouts, "Anyone?"

* * *

"Hey stranger," Oscar looks up at Jackie's voice and smiles.

"Hey."

Jackie jerks his head at Phil, who is playing and replaying that sour measure with no success. Oscar shrugs.

"Don't ask. He gets like this sometimes. Just need to leave him alone for awhile and he'll be fine." He goes back to his music, pressing into the paper with the pen hard enough for it to rip. Jackie reaches in front of him to see the music, brushing his arm. With a glance at Phil, he eases himself onto the edge of the chair and drapes his arm around the back, reading over Oscar's shoulder. Oscar shifts, looking to his side, to where Jackie's hand rests on his arm. Then he looks at Phil, who leans back on the bench, away from the offending music, putting his hands to his temples. He looks up from the keys and catches his lover's eye. Seeing the two of them, he freezes. His eyes move very slowly from Oscar, who refuses to look at him, to Jackie, who, seeing the challenge, gets slowly and easily to his feet. He smiles in the same way. His fingers drum slowly against Oscar's shoulder in a mockery of a wave.

Oscar returns determinedly to his music, shrugging his shoulder in a halfhearted attempt to dismiss Jackie, who leaves him abruptly. Oscar looks up, catches himself, and looks away. He feels Phil watching him, and he knows he's always been far too easy to read. Phil turns on the bench as Jackie moves past him. In the whirl of the smoke he dances like a beam of light to the table where Eddie has been drinking with Madeleine True. Madeleine gives Jackie a distasteful once-over, turns on her heel and stalks across the studio floor to Mae's corner. This night's companion, Sally, clutches to Madeleine's jacket, trailing behind her, looking like a crushed moth with her dirty blonde hair, dirty yellow dress, and dirty white makeup all askew.

Eddie's progress is marked by the six shot glasses on the scratched wood surface of the table behind him. He drains his current glass and slams it down on the hardwood table. After a few seconds, a hairline crack appears in the glass and it falls to the floor and shatters properly. Phil jumps up from his seat and hurries to the table where Eddie is recruiting an audience. He grabs Jackie by the shoulder, but Eddie stands up like he's going to make a toast and Jackie shoos Phil away. Resigned, Phil sit down gingerly as Eddie introduces himself grandly to the entire room, and hopes that he won't be noticed.

As it is, Eddie is barely seeing the people sitting in front of him, which works out just fine, as they are barely listening to him and his tales of marital bliss and denial. It's difficult for Jackie to maintain any pretense of attention when the conversation, or in this case monologue, turns to marriage.

Eddie glances at his wife across the room and Jackie does the same. All who are watching raise their glasses to him in congratulation. Jackie puts his glass back down before he takes a sip from it in toast. Mae's gotten better about caring for the dark brown roots of her bleached hair, but he knows he's seen the dress before. Ten years before. He tips his glass to no one in particular before he drains it.

Mae has always looked like she's trying to be twenty-five. When she was twenty-one, a dancer with promise and an agent famous for his special interest in the chorus girls, she could fool them all. At thirty-four, the façade was not as convincing. The pink costume has a clumsily sewn rip on the skirt. Jackie remembers that tear in their rush to share skin late one night. He shrugs. After a few more drinks, perhaps Mae can be forgiven her status as used goods, though with women, Jackie rarely looks back.

Before the drinks, Eddie tells himself as he looks at his wife to try and believe his luck. Hanging off a mildly interested Madeleine True's arm, she winks at her husband and continues, raising her voice to that inhuman resonance and saying, "Lovin' Eddie is like lovin' Niagara Falls, the first time you see it, you're amazed by just how big it is."

Jackie glances at Phil, who looks vaguely disgusted and is twirling his hand to check that it hasn't seized up He gestures to another corner of the room, gets up, brushes off his jacket, and takes off without a second look back.

Phil catches Jackie's arm and pulls it around his own waist, steering him in one stiff turn away from the piano where Oscar sits, practicing. Jackie lets him, though over Phil's shoulder he manages one coy smile before they are lost in the crowd. Phil snaps his fingers sharply in front of Jackie's face a few times until he looks around, still coy, still smiling. Phil hits him on the shoulder and lowers his voice, "Stay away from him, Jackie." His face, as he says it, is very serious. For the first time all night, it's clear to crowd around them what his voice really sounds like. Jackie's eyes are half-closed as he listens to the music over Phil's voice. His arm drapes limply around his waist. For now, he is content to let him lead. Phil ducks underneath their hands and draws them across the floor, away from the piano bench where Oscar is trying to disappear into the carpet. Jackie's attention shifts lazily back to Phil, whose temper is simmering dangerously. "Why? You're staying away enough for the two of us."

He releases Phil's waist and twirls him once. Midspin Phil knocks into a woman in a green dress and sends her glass flying across the room, shattering against the victrola and causing the music to stutter for a split second. Sally, draped, dead-eyed in her corner, rises slowly and stalks her way meticulously across the room in a single, straight path. She pulls the needle up off the record, sticks her head inside the victrola, and lets out a window-shattering scream. Then, without even shaking her head to clear the dully blonde hair out of her eyes, she stands to her full height. Madeleine True's glass has shattered, likewise against the table where the victrola sits, inert. She claps her hands in pride and enthusiasm, breathlessly she takes Sally's arm and raises it high.

"Isn't she just brilliant! Oh Sally, Sally! Postmodern goddess! Kiss me," she leans in, but Sally stares straight ahead, neither knowing nor caring, nor even remembering who heard her. Madeleine assumes a sudden air of dignity and stands up straight, "You're right, my love, we should wait…" and other sweet nothings. As close to an imperious expression as Sally is capable of putting across, that is the look that crosses her features now as she shoves Madeleine aside, pausing only to hand her her own wine glass. And this time it is Madeleine who trails after her like a crushed butterfly in her green-and-gold splendor, trailing her magnificent blue scarf and her flaming, blood-red hair like a banner.

Queenie resets the record in the victrola and claps her hands sharply, bidding the party go on.

Phil hasn't given up the bloodhunt so easily. He attaches himself to Jackie and slaps the side of his face quickly, getting his attention, pointing a finger accusingly in his face. "I'm warning you, Jackie, stay _away_ from him."

Jackie takes his hand again and pushes it to the side, still smiling he looks to Oscar, who glances up, sideways, back down. Phil sees. Jackie dips Phil by one arm and brings him back up, shocked. "I don't get what it is with you two. All you can talk about when you're together is other people you've been with. And then the second any real competition comes your way…" he brushes Phil's shoulder again, coy, but almost understanding except for that smile, "He's not entitled to a little fun of his own?"

"Don't pull that trick, Jackie. It's different with Oscar and me now. Not like it was. He has his own music, we have our career to focus on… he doesn't know about… about us." Jackie scoffs. Phil changes the subject abruptly and ploughs on. "We have an offer from a new theater-"

Jackie waves a hand as if brushing his words out of the air, "'Theater', _theater_ as in the speakeasy down the street. Playing your music to thin air and stale booze, and trying to pretend you're better than all this? Shut up about your 'career', Phil, if you think Oscar's gonna make or break it for you."

Phil hits him hard against the chest and drags him still further into their corner, "Look, Jackie, _it's over_ between us. Me and Oscar have a future laid out."

"_Do you think he cares?"_ Jackie asks him suddenly, "Do you honestly think he cares? He sees what he wants, and he waits for it to come to him."

"Will you _shut up_. Just for a minute, shut up and listen to me! Oscar's the one that wanted to make this happen for us."

Jackie shushes him irritably as the music plays over their bickering and the glasses clinking. Phil seethes a moment in silence and then he looks again at his lover. Frustrated and desperate, Phil stabs again. "Oscar-"

Jackie looks down at him incredulously, "Christ- are you still on that subject? _I'm_ listening to the music. Keep up, will you? This is Queenie's party and I do intend to enjoy myself. So take a look around, Phil. Count the people whose eyes are on me, because they all seem to understand this. I'm going to do… whatever I want. And for…" he indicates five, ten, fifteen women and men throughout the room, "All of them, I did a pretty good job of getting them what they wanted too. Get used to the competition, Phil. I don't think it's your music that keeps the audience in their seats. So-" he flutters his hands over Phil's head, "Shoo, run along." And before half another word is out of Phil's stunned mouth, Jackie turns on his heel and walks away, stopping to take another glass and then to join Queenie at an ashtray by the bar. She twirls around in one stark white flash and draws herself close to him. She wraps her leg around his waist and winks mischievously.

"Ladies choice?"

"Light of my life." He fairly moans. He lifts her obediently and off they go. Nadine wanders a few steps behind them, watching Jackie and Queenie spin across the floor with one movement. They are both holding drinks as they spin so effortlessly. Queenie is laughing, for once not looking over her partner's shoulder to make sure all eyes are on her and her flashing movements.

The moment is soon over. Queenie pats Jackie maternally on the cheek and seems to sweep away. Nadine watches her go, then kind of flounces her way over to Jackie, trying to imitate Queenie's swaying hips.

As she finds herself standing in front of Jackie, she freezes and the words won't come. Jackie has to laugh as she tries so inexpertly to toss her hair. Nadine isn't sure if she should be hurt. She is terrified to reach out for him the way Queenie did. The moment is cut in half by a faint scream and then the curses of a group of people surrounding the bathroom. But the most prominent of all the boisterous voices by far is that of Burrs, who shoulders his way forcefully through the crowd, half-carrying his wife and clearing a path for them with his violently swinging cane. His arm is tight and crushing around her slender white shoulders as his voice rises in a crescendo of panic.

"What do you need? Godamnit, Queenie, baby, tell me anything! Tell me anything-"

Under his shouts Queenie murmurs _"Burrsie…"_ in an increasingly impatient voice and raises one faint white hand to her forehead. In one fluid motion she propels herself up and out of Burrs' arms and screams, "I need to do the Black Bottom!" With a sizzling purr, she switches out the record in the victrola and sets the tone for her to tear up the dance floor. Jackie claps and then holds his hand out to the girl, who takes it and dashes after him into the crowd with a cry of delight. Burrs can be seen by the bathroom door with his arms still outstretched, the embrace in which Queenie had barely rested a few seconds before, as though he can't quite believe what's just happened to him. His expression changes all at once and from his place, Jackie can see his teeth gnashing furiously. But Queenie is all shimmer and sex tonight. She's a white beam of radiance being passed and carried by the whole crowd at once, as though something this beautiful should never have to touch the ground. Jackie spins her as they both watch Queenie. "She's amazing." Nadine breathes. And she is. She's the queen of the underworld.

Without warning, the door blows open as though hit by a heavy gust of wind. The people nearest the door back away to clear a path, brushing stray spangles off their clothes. A smoky, exotic woman stands poised in the doorway like a tigress. With one sharp, polished nail she beckons over her shoulder for the hand of her escort, whom she draws close behind her before she spreads her arms, as though the dark stranger is the canvas for her dagger-eyed and dagger-tongued magnificence. In a throaty drawl that carries effortlessly over the chaotic music, she cuts through the noise, "I'm here, I'm here, _I am here!"_

Burrs, close to the door and without a partner, is the first to latch onto her. "Kate, Kate, you still got it in ya…" He drags the woman's name into three syllables in sickening falsetto. Kate reaches back over her shoulder and holds her escort by the hair, controlling but affectionate, as though he is a stray dog she's taken in. She releases him but he stays close to her. She turns to him and purrs, "Get me a drink," in a tone of voice that leaves no room for argument. The man scurries away to do her bidding. Kate turns her attention, though not her eyes, to the host. Burrs hovers like a poisonous insect with his lips inches from her ear, passing the glass from the man's hand into hers. Kate's eyes move over Burrs' face with kohl-rimmed contempt, and they exchange a quiet and piercing word before she brushes him off and catches Queenie, who turns with a squeal and beckons her shadow.

"Nadine!" she trills, and the girl looks up. She pulls away from Jackie, but flashes him a 'can-you-believe-it' look of secrecy and joy before joining Queenie and Kate and Mae. She reaches one tiny hand and touches Kate's spangled black dress. She gives a sigh of longing.

"You're _beautiful_."

"Kid's got good eyesight." Kate gives her throaty, ice queen laugh, but the small, indulgent smile under the smirk does not entirely escape notice. Mae puts her arm around Nadine's shoulders.

"You know who this is, Nadie? We've seen her posters all over town! And I tell everyone, 'that's my friend Kate! We danced together! And now…'" she stops, seems to realize no one is listening, continues in an angry undertone to herself, "And now I'm fat… and she's a star!" she drops her arm, gives her sister a little shove, and stalks away, still muttering to herself.

Oscar, by Queenie's ear, whispers, "A star indeed. When you're using the men to accessorize the dress…"

"Would it be fair to put you in the running, honey?" she shoots back, "Star… more like a cheap slut." She hisses, only half-joking.

"Well. I guess everyone's already had you, so why even bother to charge? By the _way_, Queenie, I _love_ the dress."

"Why _thank_ you Kate."

"I loved it even more three parties ago." All in bad fun. This continues for awhile as the men look back and forth between them with fascination, until at last the girls put up their verbal swords and embrace and kiss and conspire. Queenie is whisked away yet again. The first chance she gets, she will come back to inspect the man who, in more ways than one, seems almost too good to be true.

* * *

Madeleine True sings to herself as a flame sputters at her side. She takes hangers one by one from Queenie's crammed closet. Notable dresses that mark the years gather dust in the wreckage, one covered in the contents of a spilled container of lavender eyeshadow. Most of these are strewn across the floor. Nadine is at her side, hovering among the dresses, reaching out and spinning across the room with her arms over her head. She recognizes the song Madeleine is humming and joins her, "Singapore Sally lived in an alley, down by Maleno Bay. The story of her life, her trouble and her strife, she happened to tell me one day…" Nadine slows suddenly and comes to a stop as Madeleine takes her hand and spins her. Madeleine turns to see her lip quivering anxiously. She puts her arm around the girl's shoulders. "What's the matter honey?"

"Is Queenie gonna be mad about this?" Nadine looks around at the wreckage. It looks as though Queenie's closet has been hit by a tornado. Madeleine chuckles deep in her throat.

"Don't even worry about it. She's been meaning to get rid of this stuff for a long time, a lot of it at least, honest. Including…" she pulls a black feather costume boa with a flourish from underneath a pile of jewelry and a crumpled turquoise hat. "Maybe I oughta just get rid of this…" but as Madeleine knew she would, Nadine jumps toward her and lets out a little squeal of delight. She takes one end of it, wrapping it around her frame and closing her eyes.

"_Sing- sing- Singapore Sally! Life gave her quite a shove! Sing- sing- Singapore Sally!"_

"_She was waiting for her long-lost love…"_ Madeleine finishes. Nadine pulls the boa up to her face and rubs her nose into the feathers, breathing in Queenie's perfume and sighing. Madeleine True pushes the bedroom door open and waves her arm briskly. Jackie peers around the doorframe, arm in arm with Kate as Madeleine parades the girl in front of the cracked vanity. Nadine examines her reflection with a critically puckered up face. She beckons to her mentor, who smiles over her shoulder into the mirror.

"You think I'll ever be as pretty as her?" She means Queenie. Madeleine lets down her own scarlet sheet of hair and gathers Nadine's curls away from her little china face with her black ribbon.

"Angel, you already _are_. All you need to do I work on attitude. Strut your stuff, act like you deserve to own the room and you _will_ own the room, damnit!" Madeleine punches her fist into the opposite hand and her protégé imitates her. With a flourish she indicates Kate and Jackie sitting on the double bed. Nadine smiles, there's a smudge of pink lipstick on her front tooth. She peers out the door, sees Queenie, and dashes across the floor to her. Madeleine smiles after her, knowingly, proudly, and underscored with sadness. She looks at Kate, who stares stonily back.

Queenie's voice rings out, shrilly mocking the girl, "Get lost!"

Nadine gathers the feather boa close to her chest and strokes it like a beloved pet as she turns slowly on the spot and hangs her head. She walks back into the bedroom with her tiny arms clutching the black feathers. She suddenly gathers speed and flies to Madeleine, wrapping her arms tight around the woman's waist. Madeleine places her scarlet-taloned hand on Nadine's brown curls and when she looks over her head in the silence Nadine slowly lets her go. Madeleine True brushes her hands off, businesslike and brisk once again, and she picks up a blue silk chemise with a tear in the front off the floor. She tosses it carelessly over her green and gold clad shoulder to the double bed.

"One of you, be a lamb and throw that out the window for me." Then a black dress with a white corset top Queenie hasn't worn in years. "This too."

Nadine sits down, almost warily, next to Jackie and Kate on the bed and picks up Queenie's dress. She looks at first like she wants to ask him something, then changes her mind. Kate lights a cigarette and then throws one to Madeleine, who reaches her hand out to Nadine. "Come on, angel, let's go find your sister."

Nadine pauses, her hand halfway to Madeleine's. Slowly, she withdraws. "That's okay." She murmurs, "I think I'll stay here for awhile." She is curled with her arms around her thin legs. She is sitting very close to Jackie, who reaches out and examines the fabric around her neck. Madeleine frowns a little, thinking, and then clears her throat.

"Okay, lamb, if I see Mae I'll…" it's useless to finish. She waves her hand to suffice, and takes Sally by the hand, but she, too, pulls away from her. It is with a feeling of falling that Madeleine True turns her back on the four of them and leaves their room alone.

* * *

A/N: These beautifully tragic characters and any music used are not mine. See previous chapter. 


	3. To See the Truth

_"Pour the wine and let the music play low-down  
Let me hold you like a loverman would  
When I kiss you, babe, don't tell me to slow down  
Here's the lowdown: Ain't nothin' bad about feelin' good..."_

_- The Wild Party_

* * *

The man is limber, sharply cut in a stark black suit with a sepia grace about the cheekbones. He meets Queenie's eyes over the rim of his wineglass, and then looks away, with casual indifference, to a guest at his left. His hand rests gingerly on the rough wood of a screen emblazoned with pictures from grayscale to sepia of Josephine Baker and Mae West. The man is a professional gigolo, the escort of a very close friend. Strictly off-limits. Suave, straight, sure, a tired and rehearsed smooth-talker with a cliché for every woman. Queenie pegs him as inner-city. As a New Orleans Vaudevillian herself, she sees the masked class in his walk and hears it in the Brooklyn-edged voice. She wonders who should approach first.

As it transpires, Black is the one who breaks the failing, idle silence, "What's a beautiful thing like you doing over here all alone?"

"Hello, Mr. Black."

"No, no 'Mister', no nothing. Just 'Black'."

"Oh, a man who deals in secrets? My, my, you'd better be careful, _Mister_ Black. Talk gets around. Don't make yourself too unavailable, or the other guests might be saying you've killed someone before the night is out."

"I'm a well-kept secret."

"Is that so? What do you do?"

"I beg your pardon?" he smiles slyly. Queenie controls the urge to roll her eyes.

"_For a living."_

"I look good for the ladies. Kate describes me as her canvas."

"She would know; she's a walking wreck. And you, it would appear, are her well-kept stray. _Very_ well-kept."

The bristling she's given his dormant male ego shows through in his next words, "I've got a few tricks up these sleeves. Kate's not exactly the sentimental type, is she?"

Queenie gives her most sultry purr of a chuckle. She draws herself very close to the smoke-scented chest, and as if to demonstrate her own remarkable power over the opposite sex, whispers both her challenge and her invitation to a dance, "Then I'm game, Mr. Black. Let's play out your famous schmooze, hmmm? You might soon discover that I'm not like most women, but we're all on the lookout for some fun here, right? Kate included. And I don't think she'll mind if you stayed awhile, so let's go back a few nights, shall we? We're in some dark, upscale jazz club on the West Side, and you've got me, drunk and captivating as I am, and then, some blues record comes on and I'm ready to dance… and what would Kate's schmooze artist do next?"

"He'd say, 'I'm no Vernon Castle, but would you care to dance with me?"

"Why, sure thing, loverman. Hold me close and keep up." Queenie takes his hand and pulls him into step with her, "So, we're feeling the blues inside and out… swaying to the music, and you find out I'm the heiress to a mountain of diamonds in South Africa. And-?"

"And he'd ask all sorts of penetrating questions about his lady's Vaudeville show in the Bowery, and he'd ask wherever she learned to dance so light on her feet… then he'd whisper something he learned from a very great dancer about the rumba… 'the rumba-"

"'Is a vertical expression of a horizontal wish'…" Queenie recites with the wry twist of a smile. How little he knows about her. When Black glances up, surprised, Queenie merely shrugs graceful white shoulders and trills, "I've got a few tricks up these sleeves myself. So, is that what Black would do?"

"That's what Black would do."

"Then…" she begins sweetly, wickedly, very close to his ear, "Could Black explain to his lady why he is referring to himself in the third person? Tick-tock, tick-tock, loverman, the song's coming to a moody close, and I haven't had enough to drink…"

"Ok." Black passes her a sip of wine from the rim of his own cup. "Then let's take this out of the West and upscale and bring it down to 4th and Broadway. The jazz clubs are different here, and no one bothers with a formal introduction…"

"Except you."

"Too many particulars spoil a good mooch, angel. So it's Sunday night, getting' close on midnight, and this woman I know, let's call her Kate an… acquaintance of mine..."

"Interesting choice of words."

"Choice of words are half the story."

"So what's the other half?"

"Knowing which to say and which to keep to yourself. I could say something right now about how when I was watching you before, your hair and the back of your dress caught the candlelight, and you looked positively _radiant_, but we'll get to that. So this woman, Kate, and I have our own arrangement. She's invited to this party and, of course, I get dragged along for the ride. And the second I walk in there's this… divine woman sitting on the piano, catching all the light in the room, she and Kate go way back."

"To the ice age and beyond." Queenie chuckles. And she's waiting. The right words are in him somewhere. Like he's said, the choice of words is only half the battle. The other half is all in the timing.

"This woman has it all in the way she stands, her hands on her hips, all forward motion and class… even the way she smokes and holds her cigarette is beautiful. And I'm trying to think of a way to tell her all of this, when all I'm hoping is that I can get her to sit down and have a drink with me. So… what do you think, Queenie, is a washed-out all-talk like me worth a few hours of your time?"

Queenie smiles teasingly, plants a glittering kiss on her finger and brings her finger to his lips. "I think," she purrs, "I liked you better when you weren't talking. Let's see what you've got, Mr. Black, dance with me awhile and, who knows where the night may lead?"

"People do strange things in the dark," he agrees.

"The rumba, loverman. Hold me close and keep up. I'm sure you know what the _upscale_ women think of a man who can dance."

He takes her up once more in his arms and through what remains of that blues record and beautiful illusion of the elegant jazz club they spin very close to each other, Black curving her back over his arm, then drawing her back up for another moment where he had intended to kiss her, and somehow doesn't do it. The song ends abruptly and they slowly disengage. Queenie smiles with something deeper this time as she tilts her head at him.

"Very impressive." She tips her glass to him and swallows the last sip, "Let's get our drinks. I think there's room on the terrace. You might get that 'horizontal wish' yet, _angel_." And she holds out her hand for his, and he smiles as he takes it. Close as they walk to the window, Queenie, just for a minute, lets her head rest on the stranger's broad shoulder. Her arms slip up around his neck as the music plays. They look back sharply as a roar, a wave, breaks over them. Queenie sees Burrs' fierce gaze at the tan and white brushing of skin that has become the dancing couple.

For the first time all night, Burrs commands the attention of the entire room. He stands on the rickety table, announcing to the guests the presence of the long-awaited and promised vice as the sweat pours down his face. The crowd is pressing in around him on all sides, trying to dislodge him, fighting, struggling, clawing upward with ravenous hands and mouths. Burrs takes a long draught from the already half-empty bottle he holds high above the crowd, as a moan rises from twenty throats he slips out their reach.

Mae, braced at back by Madeleine True, has climbed up behind Burrs on the table and makes a wild grab for the gin bottle. Burrs seizes her arm and gives her a violent jerk forward, she twists halfway around as she falls into Oscar with a shriek. But her weight has unbalanced Burrs, has overturned the table, and in the resounding chaos, Jackie reaches up and seizes the gin from Burrs' hands. He feels hands clawing at the back of his thin shirt, hears the fabric tear, pulls out of their reach and vaults over the table. Oscar and Mae lie on the floor where they were scattered in a tangle of arms and legs, all struggling as one to get to their feet. A woman shrieks as a loose candle flame brushes her arm. Jackie turns, swoops down, seizes Oscar's hand and pulls him up. With his face still turned to Mae, Oscar laughs, and then he turns.

"Jackie, what-"

Jackie drags him forward, toward an ajar door. Oscar shakes his head and tries to wrench his hand away from Jackie's, whispering halfhearted refusals. Jackie hears enough, turns and pulls Oscar into a deep kiss. Oscar struggles against him and when they break apart, Oscar's face is hopeful and shaken and upset, but before he can say anything he is stumbling forward again in Jackie's wake. Jackie is leading him with an arm tight around his waist. The door swings open, the door swings shut. Jackie sets the bottle down. Oscar says something inaudible, some refusal and Jackie hovers at his back for a minute, then pushes away Oscar's hands, slips one hand over his mouth, kisses him hard and hisses:

"_Please_ shut up."

Oscar subsides, and Jackie sighs with relief. Outside that door are Queenie and Black. Black holds her shoulder with one hand, takes her hand with the other, gently. She casts one horrified look around at the people surrounding her, all the people she's grown to love. She looks away as Black whispers, "Let's get out of here."

Queenie is too tired to resist. She leans her head back, taps the door methodically, until her vision clears and she can see the man's face in front of her. She knows Jackie is behind her. She lets Black take her in his arms and pull her away from everything.

Behind that door, Oscar is sitting down gingerly on the rim of the bathtub. His shirt and vest are draped over his shoulders, limp with sweat, unbuttoned over a white undershirt. His hands are shaking badly as he fumbles in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He looks up at Jackie, already half-dressed and reaching down for the bottle of gin. He takes a few deep breaths before he speaks.

"Jackie…"

Jackie seems to come awake. He looks up at him, pauses, then tosses a silver lighter over his shoulder. Oscar catches it, and holds out the cigarettes, but Jackie shakes his head. Oscar tries to shrug but the smoke steadies him a little. Jackie's hand is on the doorknob before he hears his name spoken again. He turns.

"Please say something."

Jackie freezes.

"What?"

"Whenever you're with…other people I guess… we can't shut you up, but… well now it's just…"

He gestures helplessly with the hand holding the cigarette, as if to say, 'is that it?'

"It's just… what now?"

Jackie feels a faint, numbing sense of panic rising up in him at the hope in this man's face. He wrenches open the door and bolts. Oscar is frozen for a minute, staring at the shut door, and he gets to his feet as if he's going to follow Jackie out the door, maybe to find some answer he thought Jackie would give him. Then he stops, pulls his vest more closely around him, turns to the wall and slams his shoulder against it. He puts one hand over his face.

The party rages on as Jackie stumbles back out into its midst. He falls against Madeleine True, dancing with Sally, and as she shoves him back Sally reaches out and pushes her sharp and uneven nails into his hair. At a second push from Madeleine, Sally lets him go and Jackie turns to find Queenie staring straight at him over a sea of twining bodies and vivid colors. Her hand shakes mutely as she lays down the powder brush she is using to fix her face. Burrs swipes at her layers of makeup and hisses, "You missed a spot. So… what's the story with Kate's friend Black?"

"You want Black's story, ask Black."

"Queenie, stop it now. I'm askin' you." Burrs holds out an exasperated hand to her and his face looks tired. She turns away and he doesn't pursue her for a minute. But then she tries to dart past him and he seizes the low back of her dress. "Don't _ever_ think about leavin' me, Queens…" Part plea and part threat.

Queenie gives a strangled shriek of disgust as Burrs shifts suddenly and the terrible, manic gleam of possession darts back into his eyes and he kisses her with the sudden ferocity to bring blood. Kate pushes past a couple on the hall table and gets between them with a yell of "What the _hell is going on here?"_

Kate's hand is outstretched to her. Black hovers behind her, outside the circle as Burrs grips Queenie hard by the wrist and, though his words are disdainful, he can't quite bring himself to meet Kate's eyes.

"Nothin' for you to worry about!" he spits at her.

His voice is boisterous, loud, grating, twisted with exaggerated rage. He has eyes only for Queenie. Then he follows her blank, stoic stare, and he seems to leap toward Jackie in three steps. He seizes him by the waist demandingly as Kate's hands clasp Queenie's shoulders firmly. Jackie sees in her slate grey eyes the scream she is burning to let fly. He sees the revenge she takes in her quiet. Burrs can do what he wants to her. He can't make her be here.

Burrs drags him past the women and Jackie's hand reaches out unconsciously toward her. Queenie turns away, but his fingers brushes the woman's bare arm as he staggers along, and he hears Queenie's voice and façade waver as she pushes away Kate's embrace.

"Just gimme the bottle Kate, and I'll be a whole new woman. Get my life outta your mouth."

Jackie is slowly being forced toward the door of one of the guest rooms, all his weight against Burrs' shoulder and half-asleep. He feels Burrs' hands fumbling with the scarf around his neck, then he feels the wall at his back, the corner of a table jabbing hard against his hip. Burrs has wedged him into a makeshift corner. He presses his lips to the side of his face, and then more forcibly to Jackie's mouth. Jackie winces hard at the touch, at the stench of gin on Burrs' breath and the pain of his clenched hand on his neck. He pushes away, feeling again that sudden rush of panic as he hears Burrs' voice hiss in his ear.

A voice behind Burrs cuts him off. His hand leaves Jackie's neck. Jackie slides out over the table, almost running to where there are people, other bodies to lose himself in. He tries to push Burrs from his mind. He takes a long drink from the gin bottle with Mae, trying to push away the weakness, and the fear he thought he had forgotten.

Into a second gin bottle and surrounded by broken glass, a group of ten or so struggles with entwined arms and legs. Under the pressure of the people stronger than she, Nadine is clutching the bottle with one small, desperate hand. A woman stumbles; her partner falls against the little girl, who cries out. Jackie ducks his head against the assault of careless hands and shoulders, hooks one arm around the girl's tiny waist and extracts her from the mess. Nadine is laughing triumphantly as Jackie lifts her clear off the floor. She and he are both clutching the half-drained bottle against her chest.

Even as he sets her down, Jackie keeps his arm around the girl, pushing his hand hard against his face as he murmurs:

"We don't want to be in here. 'S too much, let's go sit down… give me this."

He pulls the bottle from her arms and throws it to a passing guest. Nadine is still laughing, her face pressed against his chest, she breathes with him. Jackie threads his fingers into her light brown curls. She shivers a little, wrapping her arm around him in turn. They go to the window through the wreckage that will only get worse from here.

Queenie is letting herself be led just a few steps away. As she meets Jackie's eyes she makes an anxious, desperate movement towards him. Black is not looking back as he leads her out into the moonlight. Queenie turns her eyes away from her friend. She turns instead to the city skyline.

Black is hovering behind her, not sure, having released her hand, if he can or should take it again. He'd heard anonymous whispers about the life Queenie led with the washed-up Vaudeville clown, but now he's seen, in a moment of thirty seconds, the life she crafts carefully in layers, like her white powder makeup, every day.

He follows her gaze out to the shadows of insomniac New York, he feels the weight of all those lost lights curving sorrow into her shoulders as she toys with her glass atop the fire escape railing.

"So, loverman. Part of your mooch must be working. You got me out here all alone. Not far from the finish now, are you? 'Till you got me right where you want me."

Black clears his throat.

"Queenie-"

Queenie's laugh stabs through the night air.

"Which is where, by the way? You're with Kate. Probably sick of the woman being on top. Wanna prove you can actually do something-"

"Queenie," he says again. She stops. She waits for him to find new words. Words she might believe he's saved for her, for this night.

"This isn't like that. _You're_ not like that."

"Yeah?" she looks away. "Prove me wrong."

Black loses his nerve. He looks helplessly at all the lights surrounding them. Queenie sighs, rocking back and forth on her hands. He was going to say something about those legendary eyes in the moonlight. What comes out instead sounds like, "Nice night."

Queenie scoffs.

"Sure. You like the same old games, same old people, same old smiles and costumes and goddamn cheap-gin-love, it's a party to remember, to be sure."

She holds her glass high like she's going to take a long drink, but instead she kneels down beneath the railing and turns over her glass. The ice shatters on the pavement three floors below.

"The city. So many lights, you can actually pretend one of 'em's shining on you." She laughs a little more quietly, "I'm what they mean when they talk about the dying breed of New York woman. But there's always gonna be girls in this God-forsaken city like me. That's not what's hard to accept about living here. What's hard to accept is… well… some of them made it. What's hard to accept is that, if people like us were gonna make it, we'd have made it already."

And incredulously, Queenie smiles. Her every part and thought has learned to lie. And now, with the night looking on, she is facing truth. She turns to Black, and sees truth reflected there. They move uncertainly to each other as they kiss, and despite what she's told him about how she met Burrs, she does want to be rescued. She wants it more than anything.

* * *

Jackie has found a quieter place in the apartment to forget. Mae's torn dress hangs off one shoulder and she pulls him to the floor without breaking away from him. Their eyes are closed. They hear tentative steps in the background, and they hear a voice. Without her sister or anyone whose name she knows, Jackie hears the wander and the echo in Nadine's voice. Mae pries her mouth away from Jackie's and looks resigned and irritated as she puts a hand over her forehead.

"Mae?" again that tremble of a voice as Nadine searches down the hallway.

"Make her go 'way, Jackie. Get her out of here," her sister hisses.

Jackie pauses, he pushes himself to his feet, pulling his over shirt onto his arms. He slips through the door of the guest room. Nadine is a few yards away, but when she sees Jackie her tired face regains a little of its former light. Jackie looks back at Mae, then he goes to the girl who, it seems, is looking in every one of the rooms to find her sister. He comes close to her and takes her hand off the doorknob, shaking his head. He glances through the keyhole himself, raises one eyebrow, raises the other, and makes a mental note:

_I didn't know legs could bend that way…_

There's a split second where he considers pushing open the door and maneuvering his way in between the many couples twined together on the couch and on the floor. But then he looks at the trembling, drawn-looking little girl, shakes his head, takes Nadine by the shoulders, and keeps her moving. Nadine, for her part, is forgetting that she was ever unwelcome at this party. She is chattering happily as she leans completely against his shoulder and his chest. They reach the end of a dead-end hallway, where the two of them rest against the wall. Nadine is falling asleep on her feet. Jackie is at her side, and for the night so far he's held off one fix for another. He turns and bends down to Nadine, kisses her lightly on the lips and when her eyes snap open and her hand spasms a little in his he slips his arm around her waist.

"Tired?" he asks her. Nadine doesn't move except to nod, slow and unsure.

"Gettin' there," she mumbles, though she's way past there already. She is cold to the touch. Jackie rubs her shoulder as he pulls her with him into an unoccupied room, whispering: "Come on, come with me…" to the girl in a nearly feverish voice.

"Where?" she mumbles, struggling to keep her eyes open. She reminds him of Queenie in her moments of helplessness. The room smells of stale smoke, from the cigarettes the guests smoke after sex and from the dusty perfume bottle Queenie probably hasn't touched in years.

"Come on," he says again, "something to show you…"

"Show me?"

He takes her hand. Nadine follows him onto the bed, she wraps her arms around her knees and looks up through her hair at Jackie, who sits beside her, stretches out, pulls Queenie's leather case from a pocket in his bright, defeated shirt. Nadine folds her arms down on the bed and rests her head into the bend of one elbow, blinking hard and watching Jackie with wide eyes. The white powder on the mirror is finer than talcum, she watches him bend over the mirror, inhale, lay back with his legs folded underneath him. She crawls a little closer to him and he sits up, holding his head. He reaches out for her, still smiling, brushing a hand through her hair.

"Want some?" And the girl nods, excited, a little numb. Jackie holds out a hand to steady her and he moves behind her, putting one hand against her hip, feeling the bone sharp against his palm. His vision blurs, and then recovers. Both hands now on Nadine's hips, now an arm around her waist, now easing her back into his lap. She feels his hand in her hair, guiding, pushing her forward, over his arm to the mirror. His breath is unsteady in her ear.

"_Breathe,"_ he's saying to her.

Nadine inhales. Jackie feels her reel back against his chest and he holds and lets her rest, but she takes a few sharp breaths before she twists free of his arms and draws herself up on her knees. She gives a shrill cooing sound of pleasure and then bursts into feathery giggles with her arms stretched over her head. She is at eye level with Jackie, who separates out another line for himself. The room is swaying a little; he reaches out for something to hold. Nadine pushes herself pitchingly to her feet, and almost immediately falls back down again. Jackie is laughing too now. Nadine picks up a cushion from the headboard and throws it at him, missing by about a foot. She tries again, using the headboard to steady herself now.

"Stop it!" she whimpers, "It's not funny!" But she is laughing as she says it. "Gosh, Jackie… I feel like I'm so close, like there's nothing I can't have if I want it bad enough. I'm awake, I'm awake… I feel…"

She sighs in her newfound ecstasy. Jackie looks up.

"Feel what?"

"_Alive!"_ she breathes. "I can make anything I want here!"

The problem is the thrill won't numb her for long. "What _do_ you want?" he asks her.

Another hit. Even her voice is blurring a little. "I want… I want this… all of this! I want the stage… I want the lights and, and the voices and the applause… I want everything you have. I can do it, I _know_ I can. I want this world, I can take it, I _will_ take it."

She punches a small, white fist into her opposite hand the way she saw Madeleine True do only a few hours ago. "Can I have some more?"

There is a set, flinty glitter in her wide eyes. Jackie tilts his head until he has her eyes, and then:

"Nadine, you can have _anything_ you want, if you know how to go after it." _Anything_.

He sweeps his arm across the back of her knees. With a yelp, almost immediately strangled by a new gale of laughter, Nadine stumbles, collapses against him, pulls herself closer. With her hand against his leg, the girl takes another hit, not from the mirror this time, but out of his hand. On her knees, her voice growing louder and slurring worse with every word.

"I _can_, I _can_ have it all. I want a show. I'll get one, maybe with Mae if they want her back. And we'll sing for them and dance for them, and then… then they'll love us…oh!"

She stops, she pushes herself up. She comes behind Jackie and drapes her arms around his neck. He takes one wrist, then the other, between his thumb and forefinger, tracing the one parallel vein in each.

"I want _you_ with us, Jackie. You could help us do that. I _know_ you could, you could get us a theater and we could have everything again. We _can_, we _can_."

Jackie watches Nadine close her eyes, savoring dreams yet to come. The higher the castles in the air, the harder the crash back to the ground.

Unconsciously, her hands are working into his shoulders. Gentle and unthinking and innocent. Jackie is suddenly more aware of his rapid breathing. He reaches back and takes her arm to stop her. He pulls her down beside him, more sharply than he means to. Nadine's eyes are nearly glowing in the cheap imitation darkness.

"We _can_."

And she repeats it into silence, then draws his arm around her, her hand covering his against her waist. Her voice is hoarse with excitement or fear, or some combination of the two when she speaks again.

"I want some more."

His whole body jerks against her. The room has no windows, the door is closed, there is no reason for the sudden cold. He hears Nadine's voice echo in that cold, in that quiet.

"What did you just say?"

"Gimme more."

The echo, the cold, the quiet. _More…I want more…_The fear. Jackie pushes himself to his knees. The girl is crouched on her hands with her back arched like a cat. She reaches up, but he's holding the case higher than she can reach. She whimpers in frustration, and though he laughs again, it doesn't sound like him. She grabs at his shirt, his eyes are glittering in the shadow. His arm, when she touches it, is shaking. Frustrated, she sits back on her haunches and turns away from him. There is a pause, and then he touches her shoulder. She doesn't turn. Then her back, then her waist.

"Hey-" he's saying, "Come here."

He puts his arm around her shoulders and his hand close to her face. She shrugs, his grip is tighter now and she feels him kiss her. She lowers her face to his hand and inhales, feels his hand settle on her leg. She feels his breath, uneven against her neck.

"You got anymore?"

"Already?" he is laughing again.

"For _you_," she says.

He can't stop. He lets her go very suddenly and she falls forward onto her hands and knees. He goes to take another hit, then he stops, and puts the case back into his pocket. He puts a brushing hand on her shoulder and turns her

Nadine rests on her elbows and her back. Jackie's knee rests between hers. His hands are pressing against her waist, feverish with the high, darting, caressing. Her face blurs worse than ever, and this time it does not clear. Her voice sounds hollow when he bends down to her, flickering, burning out like a candle flame. She says his name, whispering some question he can't hear while his laughter tears itself from his throat.

_More… more would never be enough…_

She is asking him what he wants. She told him. He wants for what he can't have… what he wants for himself, what he _wants_ for or from the girl under his hands, listening to him laugh. Her eyes are all he can see clearly, grey underneath a clouded blue. Then her eyes close, her body shivers, the laughter in her face is genuine. The seconds catch like photographs and Jackie's hands are tangled in the fabric of Nadine's skirt, pulling her close. The pitch of her voice is softer as she struggles to catch her breath and she is whispering, questioning.

She tries to sit up, but his hands take her arms, push her back to the headboard of the bed. He kisses her again, fleetingly, feverishly. He touches her still, and her legs jerk hard. His hands are again on her waist, holding her down and now, for the first time, she is struggling. There is a plea in Jackie's eyes and in the faint way he whispers, "Shhh," to her and to himself. Nadine moans, her hands shift and try to connect with his, his weight shifts on her, his feverish hands are burning, wrapped around her. He is still whispering.

Nadine folds into herself, she wraps her arms over her tear-streaked face and, above her, she hears him moan.

Jackie feels the convulse of the little girl's body underneath him, and he knows she is screaming before he can even hear her. He releases her waist with one hand and puts it desperately to her hand, her face, her hair, some part of her he can touch gently. She screams again, out of surprise now, and a fear for someone other than herself. Jackie feels arms dragging him away from her, wrenching his arm up his back, throwing him against the wood floor. Eddie's face is twisted with drink and rage and he lands a vicious kick in the younger man's stomach. Jackie rolls over, away from him and retches, spitting up a mouthful of blood. The blows keep coming as his voice howls, breaking over him like a rainstorm.

"_Sonuvabitch, lying around with my kid! Get up! Get the fuck off the floor!"_

Madeleine True slips into the room around Eddie's back, sits down on the bed warm from their bodies, and pulls Nadine firmly into her arms. The girl's hands are pressed over her ears to block out the fight. The woman holds her, pressing her face into her shoulder, soothing but not speaking, which is what she needs. The little girl gives a violent shudder in Madeleine's arms every time she hears a blow fall. Madeleine pulls her tangled skirt down around her knees, lifts her up from the bed and cradles her against her chest. Nadine weighs nothing, a featherweight caught up in a violent storm. Then in the chaos there is a new voice.

"What the hell is going on here! Eddie- _Jackie!_"

The first name is spoken in confusion, and the second in anguish. Like lightning, Queenie is at Jackie's side, brushing his hair from his flushed and bruised face, crouching beside him and giving him a fragile shield. A sharp, quick blow and Eddie is on the floor, while Black's shirt hangs off one shoulder, taking in the scene with blazing eyes. He turns uncertainly toward Madeleine True, holding the girl and staring across the flickering candles at Queenie. It is a heavy, sad look; pity and anger, and a sense that _it didn't have to happen this way_, but there is no surprise among them. Madeleine jerks her head at Queenie, who looks sharply from her friend bent double on the floor, to Nadine crying into Madeleine's shoulder. She places her hands on her thighs and rises slow, straight, and tall. In another second she is with the woman on the bed and Madeleine deposits Nadine into Queenie's stunned arms.

"Nadine," she manages. "Nadine, sweetheart, tell Queenie what happened."

Jackie reels back as the room slides back into focus.

"Nothing!" he screams with any remaining strength. "Nothing happened, we- we…" _laughing, she had been laughing_… "We were just playing!"

"_Liar!"_ Mae's scream is shriller still as she appears in the doorway, shivering in her slip and fighting tooth and nail against Burrs, who has her by the shoulders, barely under control.

"Fucking _bastard,_ what did you do to my _sister!"_

"I didn't…" struggling to his feet… stumbling against the wall… white, cold flashes of panic stab through him. Queenie's white face flickers, ghostly in the semi-darkness. She tears her eyes away from him and Jackie stumbles forward again, toward her. Black, stunned, shoves him back a step, and the contact is so unexpected that Jackie doesn't react, only looks to the doorway as more and more people gather there, shoving each other out of the way to get a better view.

An audience.

Slowly, the feeling is coming back and Queenie is speaking to the girl slowly, "Jackie said you two were just playing, is that true?"

"Of course it's true! Queenie, honey, you have to believe me, I-"

"Lost control?" Madeleine True jumps to her feet, and she doesn't have to advance on him. She looks more than ever like an avenging angel with her hell-bent eyes. "Shut the _fuck up_, Jackie!"

"Queenie?" he whispers with a sudden intensity. Queenie could help him, Queenie had always, would always help him. "Queenie… Queenie… Queenie…" He puts his trembling hand over his mouth and sobs restlessly.

Queenie closes her eyes to him.

"Did- did Jackie hurt you?"

Another sob, bitter, whimpering, one word tearing from his throat.

"_No…"_

Nadine hears him and she jumps. Queenie turns Nadine's face away, back to her own. The same refusal as she is drawing breath, the same tiny voice of innocent fear.

"No…"

"Nadine, baby." Queenie is stroking her shaking back as gently as she can. "Please, it's gonna be okay, but please talk to me… talk to Queenie… tell me what happened, did anyone hurt you?"

"No one." the tears are glistening on her still face like ice and the sobs still circle her body, but the storm is outside her now. Queenie bites her lips until she can taste blood. All eyes are on her. Waiting.

"Just… just got a little scared, that's all."

A weak response, and they all see it. All except Jackie, who moves to the door, trying to see everyone. This is a new audience, he laughs in a voice that in any other throat would be a scream.

"_There! _There, you see! Everything is fine! The night is still young!"

He is running now, reaching now with desperate hands to the ones nearest him. Oscar pulls away from him. The stage is growing, the lights are growing bright, blinding. The lights have never been so beautiful or so cold. He's never felt so small.

Alone in the city lights he stands. He throws back his head, and what he gives voice to is not really song. It's more a plea, to the audience to fill his theater and chant his name, to his friend in whose eyes he sees the night, or to the little girl in her arms. And if when Madeleine True carried her from that room, Nadine was merely damaged goods, a broken child life would soon forget, he sees her becoming a woman.

"_Pour the wine and let the music play low-down… let me hold you like a loverman would… when I kiss you babe, don't tell me to slow down… here's the lowdown..."_

He trembles, terrified of the stony faces, terrified of the truth.

"_Ain't nothin' bad about feelin' good…"_

His voice is echoing now, leaping across the room and rebounding off all the people who no longer want it. Nadine pulls away from Queenie and she is watching him with one hand wrapped protectively around herself, the other halfway to her mouth. Pleading with her eyes, she stands there, alone, unprotected, for a full minute, and then she turns away, and darts around his decreasing circles. His hand shoots out unconsciously, and finds only air. Burrs loosens his hold and lets Mae twist free and go to her sister. The look he gives Jackie over Mae's disheveled blonde head is deadly, piercing, calculating, leaving him in no doubt that Burrs knows him far too well.

Jackie turns to Queenie, cast-iron and cold in the flickering darkness. She knows this song, it was the first he'd performed at their theater. He runs forward and takes her hands she's thrown up in defense.

"Queenie! Come on, Queenie, baby, dance with me, no-"

Queenie resists, throws him off, strikes him hard with the back of her hand and bolts out of the room.

"_Queenie!"_ he screams, and feels himself falling. Over him, Madeleine, with her hand on Nadine's back, beckons shakily.

"Come on Sally, we're leaving, let's go."

Sally hears, but does not listen. With the only briskness she's shown all evening, she makes her way across the littered floor to where Jackie is standing. She scoops Queenie's case off the floor, and takes Jackie's arm and drags it around her shoulders to haul him to his feet. She opens the case and, without an offer, takes a hit.

Madeleine's nerves are frayed to the breaking point. She screams Sally's name. Sally's eyes half-close in vague irritation.

"_Stop saying that!"_ Her voice is breathy, she addresses the whole room. _"Who's Sally, Sally's not here…"_

Madeleine looks like a door has shut behind her eyes. Sally elbows her way through the numb stares of Jackie's audience. Close to the door, and out onto the street, Jackie can hear Queenie and Burs screaming at each other. Jackie hears a woman's shriek as the door swings open, then swings shut. Sally steadies him. He sees through the window, Burrs a few feet from Queenie, his fist drawn back sharply. Queenie is bent double, clutching her stomach, her breath completely gone. She stumbles into Black's arms like he is the only thing keep her holding on. And he is.

Outside now, on the falsely glittering street curb, Jackie reels back as if he takes the blow on his own body.

Mae is half a block behind them, in between her baby sister and her husband with her arms around the two of them, trying to hold them together with silent resignation. For how much longer is anyone's guess.

Jackie limps after this strange woman bearing his weight. He does not even know her name. He stops again as they round the corner and retches up more blood, burying his hands in his tangled hair. Sally never even breaks stride. Jackie stumbles to keep up with her, bitter sobs punctuating ragged breaths. He is tired of leading, but somehow Sally doesn't need to be told where to go.

* * *

A/N: These beautifully tragic characters and any music used are not mine. See previous chapter. 


	4. No Need For Lies

Jackie's windows are open as Sally drags him over the threshold. He's always needed the cold, but now as Sally discards her dirty white dress and pulls him to the floor with her, the cold seeps inward, finds his panic, and instead of numbing it, brings it into sharp focus. Sally doesn't bother trying to kiss him; the only sound her hears is her sharp, even breath, like a blade. She crawls forward onto his chest and shoves him hard, until he is lying still; her hands are freezing against his skin.

It's all over too soon. Sally drops down to grab her dress. Unconsciousness, and the need to push himself into sleep and stay there until he forgets clouds Jackie's eyes. He grabs Sally's arm, at a bruise marked by collapsed veins, and with a mistrustful growl, she pushes him away. He falls back; his arms don't want to support him. Sally is hidden by shadow, and she doesn't look at him until he whispers:

"Please say something."

She busies herself with a pocket in her dress for a long time, and when she perches herself above him on the bed she brings with her a different kind of poison. Sally's dark, heavy eyes are blank, and the needle in her hands smiles for her in the sinister absence of moonlight. She bends over Jackie's arm, digs her fingers hard into the skin and presses the needle through. Jackie climbs up next to her on the mattress and watches as she fills the needle again and pushes it through the forest of bruises near her thin shoulder.

The darkness gathers behind Jackie's eyes, the last thing he consciously feels is Sally's knee, on which his shaking arm rests. Sally gives a moan as long as her next breath allows, then rises. She knows the lights are off, she feels the darkness' cradle and caress and hears the false promises. Her hands are trembling as she flickers the lights, then lays herself meticulously down. Not to sleep yet, it's been a long time since she could sleep, even fitfully. A long-numbed fear of nightmares at the break of day keeps her from injecting herself again. Jackie's eyes are shut tight, his hand gropes out in the dark. Sally listens to him when he starts to whisper without trying. Though they are no longer touching, his face is flushed and the heat reaches her.

* * *

_Jackie's face rested against the pane of a huge set of windows, spanning the entire length of the room. It had been raining for hours now. He reached up one hand, small, white, dry even then. He found a spot where a raindrop hit the glass and followed its spirals, up, down, up, down. His hand was freezing, inches away from the glass. He was trying to guide the rain at his fingertip. The clouds were the blue and purple of shadowed bruises as the rain pattered drudgingly on, starting to sense that it was unwanted. The drop he was following clung to the window and then fell, defeated, into the grass._

_The hearth had long gone cold. The house held a breath of cold air and let it out slowly, stirring hairs on the back of the boy's neck. In the distance, he heard a door open and close sharply, the echo sending a jolt through him. Marissa lurched forward guiltily, out of her chair, out of sleep, and forward out the door. Jackie heard her desperately clearing her throat as she assured Mr. Walker that all was well. Heard her curt and sharply cut dismissal._

_Jackie saw his father through his window, striding up each staircase, opening each door with an impatient sense of purpose. He started past the drawing room then stopped, turned. Jackie stirred. His father brought the cold into the room from the staccato city outside. He eased himself into a chair by the streaked window and took a cigarette from a pack in his overcoat pocket. Jackie went to the desk without being told, the silver lighter dully bright. He sat down meticulously then came back to his feet. His father took his hand and put it on his shoulder. The room was calm and still with expectation for a minute. Neither glanced at the empty grate. They liked the cold._

_The moment passed and Jackie felt himself being drawn forward. Then he was kneeling. His father's hand was on his neck and tightened, sending a spasm of pain down his back, numb, cold, and sickening, he felt like he'd slipped and fallen from a great height. Water or concrete was rushing up to meet him and Jackie knew better than to refuse. It didn't hurt yet. He was tired, he could be quiet. But quiet wasn't enough._

"_Don't you want to be good, don't you… don't you?"_

_And he did, he did. He wanted that more than anything_

_His father was tired, too. Maybe he'd stop, let Jackie go up to sleep, come to him later when was asleep and pull back the covers. Maybe. One hand slid down his side caressingly and braced, hard, against Jackie's waist. Jackie watched the bare walls retract around him into nothingness, so far away he could no longer see them, into the echoing halls where no one would hear you no matter how loud you screamed. Sometimes you were better off not trying at all._

* * *

When the sun would be high, Jackie hears rain pounding against the rooftop and at first thinks maybe he was allowed to go to sleep after all. There is a scream hanging in the air like the crackle of summer thunder outside the open window. Sally is crouched in the opposite corner from Jackie, shivering violently and drenched by the torrent of the rain from the open windows. Her hands buried in her dully blonde hair. She is screaming. Jackie can't move, and he only watches her until her eyes snap open, her hands reach up, groping for something to hold, or to stop, or to protect.

"_No!"_ she screams. "No, no it hurts, you know I need to hurt, you can take the hurt away, please, please! You know I want to be good, you know I'm yours."

She chokes hard with every word and shakes now, her drenched yellow hair tangled and matted around her face with spit and tears. Her hands touch her body in a darting, swift caress and suddenly Jackie is across the room. He can't touch her, and he doesn't strike her or shake her to make her come awake. He only hides his face as he hears his own ever unvoiced pleas from this woman's body. Sally stops screaming very suddenly. As though she's coming down from orgasm, Sally is breathing very hard and deep. She is shaking, broken, open and unable to refuse. Sally gropes out again, but now she finds Jackie's face, and though he cries out, he can't or won't pull away from her.

"I'll be good now, I will… I promise…"

And though she subsides into bitter sobs, Jackie goes on screaming.

* * *

Neither clowning nor the slaves to that horrible facepaint died with any sort of grace. Too many people stumbled away from Queenie's house that night with a whisper of _"Good riddance,"_ on their breath. Back to their own lives and livelihoods. Queenie dreams of that house whenever she closes her eyes.

Black guided her from its ghostly fire escape, with its metal fingers clawing up toward grey-green dawn from the flames of their makeshift Hell. Her fingers scalded at the sight of that one last candle flame sputtering for air. How easy, how easily she could have toppled it into one of those steadily spreading pools of gin on the studio floor. One accident, moments of searing light, and those terrible walls would have burned. Let them feel some of the wildfire behind those ice-grey eyes. Let her leave behind nothing but a decaying stage. But then she stopped, and turned away, so she wouldn't see that last flame burn out.

Black's coaxing voice meant next to nothing as the two of them ran, pulling each other into the disintegrating shadows when they thought they heard the sickening scream of approaching sirens. Thoughts only. When the solitary siren called at last, it was well into the dreary morning and they were too far away to hear it. The one or two cops carted the man away with little effort and even less interest. They didn't bother with the apartment on 4th and Broadway for more than half an hour. A clown, a loose cannon, an insane man seeking peace in the barrel of a loaded gun. A flickering orange streetlight leered down at Burrs' body.

Black called a friend on a long-owed favor in some street in the teens, east of 5th, and for two nights slept in a corner made by mattress and wall, Queenie lying heavily in his arms while she forced herself past the hours that made her want to cry for herself. She would get up when he slept deeply enough and watch the fire escape's ghostly fingers try to claw a tear in the misted dawn. It's where she is now, while her lover sleeps, his arms loose and safe and promising around where Queenie's body had fit, could fit still if she wanted to.

Her rhinestone and black shoe dangles from her bare foot over the rail of the fire escape. She imagines she can see her apartment, then holds her finger to her eye at just the right angle to blot it out, make it disappear forever. Maybe she'd have been better off letting it burn after all. So how can she explain to Black, still sleeping with dreams heavy for her sake, that no matter what this city does to her, Queenie will come to it every night like a resigned lover and sleep in the arms of roaring traffic and never, ever leave it. She's sat with her curls cascading or just falling limp because every part of her is just _so tired._ She's thinking of how she can go back to her apartment on 4th, maybe to find closure, maybe to bleed to death. Queenie stirs as Black begins to wake, dazed from sleep and roused by the fear that Queenie is not with him. Queenie shoves her shoes against another wall and touches Black's chest in the heat, and keeps her hand resting there. Black rubs her back roughly and then, reassured that she is not a dream, rests again. His arm drops, his embrace is warm and so safe and she could fit against him from knee to breast if she wanted to.

"We gotta go back, baby."

Her hand rests just above his heart, she traces up his chest and his neck. "You never asked for this, Black. Hell, none of us asked for this." Her hand leaves a sharp streak of white against the tan of his cheek.

* * *

Queenie lingers in the doorway to her bedroom with her arms wrapped tight across her chest, not touching anything, just looking, surveying. The air is thick and suffocating and, behind her, Black is waiting, tensed for an attack. Every few seconds he raises a hand as if to touch her, then heeds her silent request to be almost alone with her thoughts. He comes behind her in her trance.

"Queenie."

"Just another minute," she says steadily, hoping he doesn't hear the catch in her voice. "Please, I'll come, I will, but give me a minute."

Finally, Black nods and backs away through the door. Queenie hears it close and she drops slowly to her knees. The room sways and her mouth tastes like a river of blood.

"_You whore! You fucking whore! I loved you!"_

She shuts her eyes tight against the ugly cold of this voice, then another voice down the hall beckons her, first inviting and beautiful, _"Come on… come with me,"_ then pleading, shattered, _"Queenie, honey… you have to believe me…"_

And this voice is real, she hears traces of it from the third-story window. She hears Black answer with his voice of shaken strength and shadow. She hears the hard city edge, grating at the surface of his words like muscle and bone flexing under skin.

"Get out."

Two staccato words, the sounds of a struggle. Queenie, from the fire escape, sees Black three stories down, the sleeves of his white shirt drawn up to his elbows, his face hard and set. He is standing with one hand extended to the doorknob, the other at his side and clenched, taut and ready. His opponent is a trespasser on his home or his lover or anything he wishes he were entitled to. Queenie goes numb in the mocking warmth of the air as she sees Jackie, ten feet still in front of Black, staggering as he walks, partly from drinking and partly from the blow Eddie dealt him before Black and Queenie broke them apart. Queenie turns and runs down the steps to Black's side.

Black hears the door but doesn't take his eyes off Jackie.

"Get inside, Queenie."

A little panic there. Queenie shuts the door and crouches beneath the window. Black grips it ever harder and repeats his command.

"_Get out._ I want you out of here. Get away from us."

"Queenie's here-" Jackie moans suddenly, bracing himself. "Queenie, baby, Queenie, angel, please…"

Black shoves him hard, but there is no sharp blow or cry yet. Black is reduced to an animal instinct driven by fear, he is reacting. If Jackie was fully in the moment he would realize that. He only repeats his friend's name into silence. The inner city in Black's voice strains, threatening, at the surface.

"She's not gonna see you!" he warns, "Get out of here and sleep this off. Get away from us! Go!"

He pushes again but Jackie is not fighting back. He falls away from Black. Black opens the door and drops to the ground to pull Queenie up.

"Let's get out of here. We can use the fire escape."

Queenie freezes, her eyes on the window. She struggles against him without thinking and, though Black doesn't strike Queenie, the struggle is a close one. _"Queenie!"_ Her name is a command. Queenie pulls back.

"You go, Black. Go. I'll come soon."

"Queenie, _no_. I'm not leaving you here alone. He'll come back."

"_Let_ him come, Black! He's looking for _me_, for my help!"

"You saw what he did to Mae's sister, Queenie, and you couldn't protect her! What if you can't protect yourself?"

The nerve is raw and Queenie's panicked anger rushes back. Black holds her tight by the wrists as she remembers her dismissal of Nadine. There was one part of her that willed the evening onward to glory or ruin. If Nadine couldn't find her footing, she was welcome in the city that never sleeps, to join the nameless, faceless "people like us". Black finally leaves her in her old apartment. Three days seem like three years. Promise or warning of rain lingers in the air. Night is falling fast and, though Queenie should feel as though she's returning home, she feels small and scared and cold. Terribly, terribly cold.

Then that voice. From three stories down, that voice. Trembling, lost, laughing.

"_Ain't nothin' bad about feelin'… ain't nothin' bad about feelin'… ain't nothin' bad about feelin'…"_

He is breathing hard. From behind the door she hears him take another hit.

"_Good…"_ he can barely say the last word. "Queenie, honey, where are you?"

Queenie's hands are shaking, numb on the cold metal of the fire escape railing. She slips inside before he looks up and sees her, she slips down the stairs, though her world is swaying, she pushes open the door. Jackie looks up, and immediately reaches out to touch her. Queenie holds out her hands in defense and steps out of his reach, up to the landing of the first step. Jackie lets his hand fall, his gaze drops to the ground, then he looks to her side, for that shadow and that voice.

"Black isn't here." Her voice is stretched thin and taut. She isn't sure why she's telling him this, but Jackie isn't thinking about Black. He looks up at the 3rd story apartment with its bare windows like the eyes of sleeplessness.

"He… did he… leave you?"

"Burrs." The name is not a question. Queenie looks away. "Burrs is dead."

Jackie freezes, and he tries to will her to look at him. She won't do it. Through his lingering fear, the words are out before he can stop himself.

"I'm not sorry."

Queenie winces, her arms tight around herself in security, so used to the war that the sudden quiet disturbs her more than anything. She is not sorry either.

Jackie is shivering, though the breeze is warm. They both know they can't ever go back to what they were before. It's as though Burrs' ghost is still haunting this stage of an apartment on 4th and Broadway. If Queenie came to lay him to rest, all she has ensured now is that he will never leave her now. Ten years died with Burrs. Half a lifetime. And now at last, Queenie has woken up, and was handed another chance at life. Jackie looks at Queenie as though from far away. He takes his case from his pocket and opens it. Queenie hisses angrily from the doorway and he looks up. Her eyes are not on him, but on the cocaine.

"Put that away!" Her voice is a wounded trace. Jackie is pushing Burrs away from the air around them. His laughter is a sob strangled by the need not to feel weak, and Queenie catches it on the wind. "Stop it, Jackie! Stop it, just stop it, _please!"_

He is trembling as he shrinks away from the piercing pain of those eyes like his.

"Please don't be angry, Queenie… please don't hate me… please…Queenie…"

He whispers her name like a child and Queenie closes her eyes. His plea like a lover's rises from the darkness. _"Queenie, honey, you have to believe me."_ She sees the starstruck wonder in Nadine's eyes turn to fear. She sees Jackie pushing her to the bed beneath him, then she sees the way she reached for him as he ran, as if in supplication. What beautiful lies must he have told her in that room before he took her? Queenie feels a shared pain overtake the pity and her voice is grating as shattered glass.

"What did you do it, Jackie? What the hell were you thinking?"

_What do you want?_ Her voice is saying from a memory ago, _Please? I told you…_ She'd been so cold, cold when she reeled back into his arms, cold when she fought them

"I don't… I don't know Queenie…"

_I want to be good,_ memory stealing him away from Queenie's voice. He couldn't say the words even though he knew his silence would hurt him so much more. Hurt… hurt… Queenie is watching him and her voice pulls him from two sides.

"Things don't just happen, Jackie, people make things happen! Why did you do it? _Why?"_

Her panic overtakes her. Jackie feels ground rushing underneath him, damp grass under his knees and concrete beneath his hand. Pain from his chest seizes him, burns through the memory and drags him back to reality. He stays on the concrete, one solid thing in a whirlwind life. He opens his eyes and Queenie is still there, her face drawn and white even without the powdered makeup, tears in her eyes too deep to shed.

"There's… there's so much she didn't know, Queenie," he mumbles as she watches him. "…So much she… didn't understand… she would have been so lost… so alone, no one would have helped her…"

She lets him speak as she always has. Jackie is reaching out from the ground, as to some imaginary lover. He is shaking terribly, feeling reminders of that night all throughout his body. His words are so helpless.

"She told me she wanted more… she _told_ me. She was so cold, Queenie… so cold, she said she wanted everything I could give her…"

Queenie is holding on to the doorframe as the scene before her swirls white behind her eyes.

"You didn't give anything. You couldn't… you could only take away…"

She's watching Nadine in Jackie's arms, whispering to her as he touches her. Nadine is laughing, and only when he falls silent does she stir to his hands, and then she can't move. Then it is Queenie in his arms, and they are on the floor of her dressing room the night they met. The night after which Jackie wished they could have been lovers, however briefly. Then she would believe his stories. Then she wouldn't make him see how he is lying.

"She wanted more, Queenie…" His hands are in his hair and he is so terribly aware of every nerve in his body in the turbulent night air. Queenie's eyes flicker in the dark like a candle flame, she looks like she's aged a decade in the last three days, seen a bleak and unchanging future and come back to their world changed. She steps back, away and out of his reach, shaking her head.

"I can't be strong for you anymore, Jackie. I can't do it, I…"

The 'I'm sorry' catches in her throat. She turns away and whispers something like, 'I have to go.' And she bolts back up the stairs and back to the restless soul and ashes of the party. She means to slip out using the fire escape, to Black, to get away.

_Queenie was a blonde… in a Vaudeville show…and she hid what she was with a mask of snow…_

She touches the dry skin of her face. She turns once again and walks down those stairs and sinks down the wall. Outside, Jackie is on his knees, bent into himself. He has obeyed her and not taken another hit. He is letting himself cry as he hasn't in years. His throat is ragged with sobs that clash with screams. He calls for her over and over and over. Queenie's legs shake violently whenever she tries to stand. With every ounce of resolution she has, she can't walk away. She sees too much of herself here, reflected in him, reflected in his pain and eyes like mirrors. Past the moment between her two worlds, Queenie comes back down the stairs, and she is with him on the concrete, slipping her arms around him and cradling him like a child.

"Queenie… Queenie, treasure, angel…" he murmurs, folded into the crook of her neck and shoulder. "I didn't- I didn't want to take… anymore Queenie… she- just… she was so alone…"

"She was just a _child_," Queenie whispers, her voice heavy with sadness, but this burden she carries has burnt all the anger out of her. "Just a _kid,_ Jackie…"

Jackie clings her to him more tightly, even as he nods feverishly into her hair.

"She wanted everything," she continues, her arms up under his shirt and her hands touching his shoulders. "She shouldn't have been there, we shouldn't have kept her, we _knew_ something was going to happen to her. But… goddamnit Jackie… why you… _why you?"_ Limp with exhaustion, fused as one body. "You wanted it to be you, though… didn't you… you wouldn't've wanted…"

Another feverish nod and brushing of bare skin.

"Not… not someone else who-"

"Someone who didn't care what happened to her."

A whimper. "I wanted her to…" he can't finish. He wishes he knew another way to make his lovers. Queenie puts her hand on his burning cheek and draws him to her. Her skin is cold, but he is warming her. Locked closely around her, his hand gropes up to her hair.

"Are you going away?" he asks in a small voice, "Like away, away?"

Queenie's heart lurches.

"Who said- nobody said that-"

"But you _are,"_ he whispers. Defeated. "You _are_, aren't you?"

"Yes." Because there is something in his voice that begs the same truth he's given her. "I don't have to go." And for a moment, maybe she doesn't.

"No… no you do." His voice is broken. So far in the darkness that she is his only light. "He'll take care of you, Queenie."

"Jackie-"

"No listen to me." It takes all his strength and more, "listen-hey. He's good for you Queenie. You'll go with him… you'll go away and… and he'll help you and… when he says he's gonna take care of you… he'll do it Queenie… really do it."

Queenie pulls against him but his arms are tight, clinging to the light for a moment more. He's gaining a strength, a liberation that only comes with the cold, and the knowledge that there is nowhere left to run.

"You could get out… you could… only you could."

Her body is shaking as she rests, and he can rest too, for a moment only.

Queenie can be strong for no one else. She feels reality like a stone wall or shattered glass, because if she can't help him, who can?

_Who indeed,_ she whispers, _who indeed._

He pushes through her hair with numb fingers, his lips brush through the limply perfumed gold and every nerve, every synapse, every part of his body feels her for too brief a moment. He closes his eyes. Her knuckles trace his cheek.

_The higher the high, the harder the crash…_

_But you've got to keep flying anyway._

Jackie lifts himself up and out of her embrace, and he takes her arms in his and lifts her like a ghost, his head tilted as he watches her. Queenie takes one step back and finds the pitching ground solid.

"Queenie, do you know where she is?"

She doesn't know where Mae has brought her husband and little sister. Maybe back upstate after realizing the city was a world too big and bright for the girl with the china-doll face. She shakes her head. Jackie raises a hand to her and lets it drop in exhaustion. She is so real to him now. When she turns away it will be never to look back. Jackie nods again with a greater, white-hot strength. It's an assurance, a severing, a death.

This is how he remains to Queenie, a love and friend. Standing open and shivering in the midst of all his shattered selves, staring at her with pale eyes whose storms are as hard, and secret, and ever silently burning as hers.

* * *

_Storms are not like stars, whose radiance lingers on even long after their death. Starlight is like a piece of royal eternity, known by some glorious name. Storms end abruptly, leaving a bitter grey resentment for a few hours before the sun shines again. Raging storm provide the momentary, electric thrills that made up Jackie's life, and Queenie's life too, for the silver short time their lives were shared._

_Queenie's on a train to New Orleans or some stop in between lives now; maybe sleeping, troubled, in the shadowy arms of Black, or with her head resting against a small window. Her lover has lived on want and less before, and he can learn to do it again. In his memorized and fluid motions and the tan of his cheek and jaw is etched all the harsh fights of his upbringing. As for Queenie, Manhattan will always be her home, even if she never does go back._

_And Manhattan is Jackie's home and love too. With its bright and inviting face of Vaudeville and Broadway, few are inclined to turn back the stone and look on the life that thrives wildly, cheaply, drunkenly, filthily, beneath the streets. No one turns at the sound of a lie spoken in clear bell tones._

_Jackie is surrounded by the worst of the city here and now. The flask of gin in his hand is the first he's had tonight and it quiets him, but his hands still shake badly on the dully shining metal of a .32 revolver handle._

_Queenie, on the train to New Orleans, to some stop where no one she has ever known will stop to look at her or call her name. Jackie catches a sideways glance in the mirror, and his face is that of a stranger. His rushing thoughts find one firm resting place on the little girl, and in end it's a voice lifted with her innocence and light eyes of endless and empathetic pain that steadies his hand and pulls the trigger on a shaking resolve._

_Sally is curled and shut tight on the bed a room away when the shot finally comes. Queenie is curled and sleeping on the train a world and a thousand miles away when it happens. If anyone comes to take note of what's happened, they might blame it on the woman who hasn't bothered to run._

_One former lover who still lives in New York will hear about the suicide of the burlesque comet, and she will find Robinson's "Richard Corey" on a forgotten scrap of paper in a coat pocket months or years later, and she will think of him._

* * *

Queenie is nearer to New Orleans than to New York for the first time in half a lifetime. She works in a lonely stop on the way to some better life, in a place where they call her Marie and where the Bowery Theater is a vague name and a place to house all the impossible dreams of the customers here. Brassy and bold Manhattan lingers in a seldom-used voice and draws a passing compliment or two from strangers about the swagger of her walk. A late-staying guest or friend might find her as midnight strikes, strikes, stretched out on one of the tables, longing for the comfort of the dusty grand piano back in her apartment on 4th and Broadway. These shadows in the restaurant watch her slowly swinging white leg long after her shift has ended, before the worn metronome of her lovely voice starts to sing herself a memory.

In the dusky, heavy sunset, Queenie murmurs her old-act song about the Sunday Mornin' Blues with her eyes half-closed. _"Ain't nothin' as bad as the Sunday Mornin' Blues / When Saturday's child must pay her dues / Night, you thought you could win / But then mornin' came in / sayin' 'Baby, you lose'" ._

The shadow outside gives a meaningful and steady tap on the glass above his lover's head and Queenie twitches back into the present. She smiles, and he pulls open the window and slides through the frame to sit down next to her.

"May I join your song, sweet lady?" Black whispers. Queenie smiles again and reaches up for him to join her. Black takes her hand in both of his, folds it inward and lays a kiss on each of the knuckles. Queenie lets out a soft moan of exhaustion, braces her hand on his leg and flexes her fingers into skin and fabric like a cat.

Black gathers her up and Queenie lays her golden head against his chest. Each with their hand on the other's thigh, they look out at the markings of wind and rain.

Queenie is deep in shallow thoughts and memories of an old life. She and Black are away from all that now. They are less than ten years now from the war fated never to happen.

Queenie's lover has asked her, only once and only with his eyes and the tone of his voice, if she is happy with this new existence. Queenie only smiled as she does now, as though sharing a secret.

The smoke from the smoldering cigarette on the tabletop catches Queenie's face and frames it. Black cups her ear in his hand and leans close to her to whisper, "This is ours," and mean this empty hall, this land and wind and water, all away from life in memory. Black's palm leaves Queenie's thin leg, trails up and cups her breast. Queenie takes his arms and pulls his chin into the crook of her neck.

"This is ours," She repeats.

She kisses up to Black's jaw. They can slip out the window the same way they came. The wetlands absorb the algae stone of the building where Queenie works now. The road ahead of them marks their way back. There's an unlocked apartment a midnight walk away where the two of them can go to make love in a place of their own, and without fear. Anonymity is the price they pay for security, and quiet the price they pay, if not for happiness, then for contentment. For security of a place where they don't feel watched or chased. Or desired.

Is she happy? No. She is at the second stage of her life, where she can look at what she has and what she's become, smile a secret to herself and say, with new honesty, _"Okay, it'll do."_

* * *

A/N: These beautifully tragic characters are not mine, nor is any music. The characters belong to Joseph Moncure March and Michael John LaChiusa, and the music belongs to Walter Marks.


End file.
